[UPDATE 2010: some edits were made to the list and are highlighted in blue.]
[See the YouTube Swiss Alps Flying Tour.]
The update of imagery mentioned over the last few days for Google Maps is now available in Google Earth. Swiss Alps terrain is in high resolution (10 meter)! This is awesome to behold! .
Here’s the scoop from Google on what is new:
- Entire country of Switzerland at 50cm and many Swiss cities at 25cm (thank you, Endoxon)
- Entire country of Switzerland terrain at 10m resolution, Swiss Alps are now high-res!
- Entire country of Denmark at 50cm
- Australia day flyover (Google maps special)
- Cities of France: Lyon; Le Mans; Lourdes; Reims; Nancy; Limoges; Lille; Arles
- Potsdam and Magdeburg, Germany
- Barcelona, Belem, Cape Town, Galapagos (Isabella Island), Manaus, Mt Saint Helens, Recife, Rio, Venice
- Whistler British Columbia
- Full state coverage for Wyoming & Utah
- Cities and counties in the US: Kirkland, WA; 6 counties in Arksansas; Dallas county, IA; Rutherford County, NC; Lancaster County, NE; Johnson County, NC; Lee County, NC;
- significant amounts of new DigitalGlobe data
Check out OgleEarth’s review of the new Swiss Alps data.
By the way, I wanted to point out that a GEB reader named Jonas was the first to point out the new Denmark imagery to me on Feb. 26th. Thanks Jonas!
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
Yes! The Alps look beautiful, especially with a Space Navigator.
And best of all: fly to Zermatt, Switzerland and put the camera at the bottom of the valley. Now look up to the SW to see the Matterhorn…looking just like the Matterhorn should (finally)! All I can say is, more high-res terrain, please.
(on a side note, doing a search for “Matterhorn”, even when staring right at Switzerland, flies me to…Matterhorn, Colorado?)
Barcelona new imagery? Yesterday I was watching the new dikes in the harbour area, and today they disappeared. The “new” imagery is older than the previous one.
Or perhaps it’s not about the Catalan Barcelona…
The switzerland imagery is also older, but I prefer quality over freshness. Love the high-res terrain, the few places I’ve checked out have very realistic results, much more convincing than the earlier data. Check out Lauterbrunnen for some impressive drops.
Why won’t they update the images of England?? Pretty much everything apart from London and the South East is still rubbish!!
The colors in Switzerland are beautiful!
There are also new high resolution pictures of the region around Lille, France and the places in Germany that were’nt in high resolution before.
Finally, all of UTAH!
I don’t want to complain but the Vienna, Autsria imagery hasn’t changed since July 2005 and since then its pretty bad with no houses recognizable, streets on the wrong places and 5 huge clouds over the city… well i guess a city of 2 millin is too small for google… wyoming is more important.
The Switzerland imagery around Zuerich is at least 4 years old and probably older than that. A house a relative of mine moved into 4 years ago isn’t even in the process of being built in those images!
I may have answered my own question. I see now that you say the TERRAIN is 10 meter. Another line, not yours, says that all of Switzerland is at 50cm (close to 2 ft.). It must be that your “terrain” refers to the elevation grid, giving us the terrain texture, which gives us a better 3D representation of the Matterhorn.
Speaking of the Matterhorn, it and Half Dome in Yosemite show the problem with draping a flat straight-down photo over a 3D texured terrain. All the vertical surfaces are unusable. I wish there were a way to get around that, without resorting to 3D models from Sketchup. Maybe something along the lines of MS’s taking side shots would work.
Ernie
Agreeing with Bradfields: even all of the SE of England isn’t covered. Case in point being the Great Cutoff of decent imagery just East of Oxford. Not frustrating at all for someone who lives there, oh no.
The resolution of the images from Switzerland are very good but they must be older then 6 years! Our house, which was built in 2001 is not on. Hope this will improve.
I have just put together a 360-degree VR image from 200m above Whistler in GE, using this new imagery, you can see it here:
http://housser.ca/?content=view_vr&id=198
I have done a few other 360s from GE:
http://housser.ca/?content=vr&group=ge
John
http://housser.ca/
The entire coutry of Switzerland at 25cm? Am I missing something!
When I look at my house in Australia I can see it, roads etc. very clearly
However, when I look at the northern part of Switzerland (Stein am Rhein, Untersee, Bodensee etc.) the only thing I can make out are lakes of several square kilometers. Houses, roads, even towns are unrecognisable. This doesn’t seem like 25cm resolution to me! Any suggestions?
Greetings!
Where can I request to have our region remapped? It seems that the images there are from 2004 or 2005, so much development has been done and there are structures as well as roads that are now existing which aren’t shown on the old maps.
Our place is the Bicol Region in the Philippines covering Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Masbate, Sorsogon and Albay.
Thank you.
I’d like a remap of Lahania, Rhodes, Greece. If you look at it, theres a thick clound covering the spot where I think there has been illegal building activity and other squatter activity where 18 scattered properties are at risk.
It’s been THREE YEARS since the photo was taken with this THICK CLOUD obscuring most of my properties.
Rather than travel from Australia to this Greek village every year I’d like to stay in Australia and view satellite photos of the area MINUS THE CLOUDS. Any squatter activity (building, planting, plowing is easily detected with these google maps.
It pretty cool but wht about the caribbean? we need some updating
I’m Swiss, and I’m wondering where they did get the images. No more high res from 3 years at least. I thought Google bought endoxon that does very accurate sat images ???? Is that true ?
Google earth ,,,
since last 3 years you did not put highresoluton image of my villege “Pomburla, maharashtra, India” (co-ordinates 60degree,30’N & 73degree 30’E)
please do it as soon as possible because I can’t wait to see my hometown at all.
Tasmania is one of the most beautiful and most exploited places on earth !!! PLEASE update the maps
We need some real updates for western Belize! Most of the imagery is almost ten years old!
pictures from huge parts of switzerland are almost 14 years old. Could you give out any information if there will be updates in the near future? Particularly in my town the pictures are very unreliable. Some streets appear in the street layer but not on pictures and you can zoom in anywhere and find a building which doesn’t exist anymore or a not built-up area which actually is built-up for a long time already.
Look it up:
Zug, Zug, Switzerland
hey my village name is chikhali(nanibai)frm kop dist. nd u hv nt placed on google map so i cant posibl to see my village also my frnds so i request u to place it on maps plz……………..